August 16, 2006

Lennart Nilsson's A Child Is Born, And That NOVA Episode You Remember

In the mid-1950's, Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson pioneered the use of endoscopy to take pictures inside the human body. Starting in 1965, his unbelievable photos of in utero fetuses and zygotes were published in magazines all over the world, and were sent in the Voyager space craft [and which will be the last thing humans see before V'Ger destroys the Earth in its attempt to merge with The Creator in 2272, but let's not worry about that now.]

More importantly for our purposes, Nilsson's book, A Child Is Born, is a fascinating melding of science and art. It's been kept in print for over 40 years, and Nilsson adds new pictures as new technologies make them possible, but the core is still the remarkable photos of feti--and the equally remarkably dated haircuts on those parents.